Help! wifi music

Hey! I am new to broadband and this site. I live way out in the country. I need knowledge on how and what I need to set up streaming and downloading of music etc. I am trying to set up from a At&t uverse wifi router to two older XP laptops to two older speakers. What do I need in the way of hardware & software for a cheap simple way to get Internet music and downloads etc? Please keep your words simple.

Cheap can be a vague term depending on your level of budget. On the other hand it would be better to state what level of listening do you desire. Going by what you are saying, you plan on using a laptop to play the music? and have powered speakers from the laptop.

Lets look at the hardware first. If quality of sound is high on your list I would suggest going with some type of DAR (digital audio reciever) connected to an amp/stereo or some type of powered speakers. Most built in sound chips in laptops/computers don't reproduce music very well unless you have a special built system with a quality audio card inside. Many have used DAC's (digital Audio Converter) to help bring out the best from those files.

The Key and most important is the quality of the downloads/source. FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Code) is the highest level of digital files, but is not universal used by all devices and software. WAV and MP3 works with most if not all hardware/software. Each has its merit, WAV is lossless like FLAC but not compressed (takes up more disk space) Mp3 (320kps) is the highest level of compressed lossy, save on disk space and sound is still very good, some would say you be hard press to be able to tell in a blind test.